Typically, minor reflective elements are formed of glass and have a reflective coating deposited thereon, such as via vacuum deposition or wet chemical silvering or the like, such as on a silver line, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,737,188, which is hereby incorporated herein by reference. Polymeric reflective elements are also known, such as are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,601,960; 6,409,354; 4,944,581; 4,385,804; 4,193,668; 4,666,264; and 5,483,386, which are hereby incorporated herein by reference. For such polymeric mirror reflective elements, the need exists for a hard coat or surface on the first or outer or exterior surface of the element which is contacted by the exterior elements, such as rain, road debris, or the like, or contacted, for example, by a person scraping ice or wiping snow or condensation off the mirror element outer surface, such as during winter. A variety of hard coats have been proposed in the art, typically applied by dip coating or vacuum deposition techniques. However, a need exists for an automotive mirror reflective element which has the properties of plastic (i.e., a specific gravity roughly half that of glass), and which has a glass-like exterior surface.
Also, exterior rearview mirror reflective elements may be aspheric or multi-radius, and may typically have a less curved or substantially flat (around 2000 mm radius or thereabouts) inboard portion or surface at the inboard side of the reflective element (i.e., closer to the side body of the vehicle when the mirror assembly is mounted to the vehicle), and a more curved multi-radius portion or surface at the outboard side of the reflective element (i.e., further from the side body of the vehicle when the mirror assembly is mounted to the vehicle), in order to provide an extended field of view. It is typically desirable to have the reflective elements or substrates of such exterior mirror elements to be formed of a glass material because glass material typically provides an enhanced scratch resistance over conventional optical resins and the like.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a mirror reflective element that overcomes the shortcomings of the prior art elements and substrates.